QUAKERS IN IRELAND
TO THE PARLIAMENT OF ENGLAND,
who are in Place to do Justice, and to break the Bonds of the oppressed. A Narrative of the cruel, and unjust Sufferings of the People of God in the Nation of Ireland, called Quakers.
London, Printed for Thomas Simmons …, 1659.
4to, pp. [2], 14; final page slightly dusty, stabholes where once stitched; a very good copy, disbound, inner margin neatly repaired.
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who are in Place to do Justice, and to break the Bonds of the oppressed. A Narrative of the cruel, and unjust Sufferings of the People of God in the Nation of Ireland, called Quakers.
First edition, rare, a list of Quaker victims of persecution in Ireland with details of their sufferings. The pamphlet was published and undersigned by a group of the victims including the country’s reputed first Quaker, William Edmondson, and Thomas Holme, who went on to publish A Brief Relation of Some Part of the Sufferings of the … Quakers (Dublin, 1672).
The Quakers had an important early history in Ireland, their first meeting held in 1654, and it was in Ireland that William Penn would later convert to Quakerism. Its adherents were mostly English soldiers and merchants who had arrived during the Civil War, and, as in England, they faced significant local opposition. ‘Edw. Cook, Cornet to the Protectors own Troop, was put out of the armie for Owning the Truth; an afterwards for speaking to a Priest at Cork, was almost murthered … Mary Sicklemore, had a Cowe worth three pound taken from her, for not paying the to the value of four shilling six pence … Phylip Dymond, for speaking to a Priest at Cork, had his Cloak torne from his back, and his hair from his head’; others were whipped, imprisoned, banished, and had goods seized.
ESTC records 5 locations: BL, Society of Friends; Haverford College, Library Company of Philadelphia, and Swarthmore College.
Wing T 1581; Smith, Friends’ Books II, p. 655.
